The Bible is all about parenting — and not just any parenting, but a parenting that produces the sonship. Why do so many women in the Bible — from Rachel to Tamar to Hannah — all yearn for a son? There is a secret there. From Genesis to Revelation, there is a thread of a corporate sonship — and not just any son, but the firstborn son. Today, there is only one man in the universe; throughout the entire Bible, from the beginning to the end, there is only one Adam. We know that Hebrews 12 calls us the “church of the firstborn.” In the church life today, we have been predestinated and chosen to be part of this sonship; we all have to be the firstborn — a corporate sonship before God.
The corporate sonship
Jacob’s prophetic blessing in Genesis 49 gives us a picture of this corporate sonship; it reveals to us the essence of the Bible, giving us a wonderful vision of the experiential Christ in the church life, or how the testimony of the Lord’s life becomes manifested in a corporate way. When Moses wrote chapter 49 of the book of Genesis, there were four sets of sons from four mothers, with twelve blessings that continue throughout the entire Bible. These four sets of blessings are spiritual metaphors that correspond to how we experience the church life. Even looking at how they were listed out in the Bible — sovereignly arranged in different sequences in Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Numbers — these twelve sons give us a different understanding of the composite experience of God’s people as one corporate son. Jacob’s prophecy, indeed, presents to us an anchor early on in the Bible to understand a very experiential churching in such complete perspectives.
Notably, most of Jacob’s blessings were not beautiful. If we look at the blessings of Israel to his twelve sons, we see there are twelve sons with sinful and fleshly attributes along with transformed, fruitful, and positive attributes; yet the sons of Israel, with all their positive and negative characters, would yield the picture of a corporate people — a corporate sonship — as God’s personal treasure (Exo. 19:5; Deut. 7:6, 14:2, 26:18). This firstborn sonship is one that God was dealing with; this son is one that requires salvation, judgment, anointing, and transformation, but also the one that will reign and be part of the enlarged Christ — as the church of the firstborn (Heb. 12:23). As one entity, Israel was a picture of God’s chosen people — a precious treasure, a select and chosen race, the firstborn redeemed out of the world — who God desires to be His representation and expression on the earth (1 Pet. 2:9).
Raising up the corporate sonship by the word of Jehovah
God has a very specific view to raise up — to parent — His firstborn. God shepherds His children through His word. Specifically, we enter into the sonship through “deuteronomy” — through the repeating of the word. In Exodus and Deuteronomy, we see God’s parenting process to align and raise up His corporate sonship — to bring them out of Egypt by the Father’s hand. This process would become the inheritance of the generations of Israel — a remembrance and acknowledgment that their firstborn had been spared, and that they were brought out of Egypt by the Father’s hand. In Exodus 10, even before the Israelites left Egypt, Jehovah reminded Moses that what He was doing would be recounted to their sons and their grandsons (v. 2). The Lord brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt to reconstitute and raise His children as His firstborn to reign.
God’s people know the Lord’s works by His words. The word of God, through the law, established the Hebrew people and their redemption out of Egypt firmly in the Lord’s hands: “And it shall be for a sign to you upon your hand and for a memorial between your eyes, that the law of Jehovah may be in your mouth; for with a mighty hand Jehovah brought you out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:9). As His corporate son, this complete reliance on Jehovah is the trademark of God’s people, who have been redeemed and bought by our Lord. Do we have this mark — this branding, this testimony? Our branding is not our culture, opinions, or background. Our branding is that we are not Egyptian — that we have been called out of the world. We were brought to this life by the Father’s hand, and the work He is doing in us, on us, and through us is to give us the ground to receive this very specific sonship and to claim our inheritance.
Not only were the Israelites brought out of Egypt, but they were the firstborn redeemed by the lamb: “And every first offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb; and if you do not redeem it, you shall break its neck. And every firstborn male among your sons you shall redeem” (Exo. 13:13). Just as the work of the hand reminds us of the words of God, the works of the Father’s hand also bring us back to Him as the Word, which is visible, powerful, and tangible in our lives; He leaves His fingerprints on His beloved firstborn in a personal, irrevocable, and undeniable way. His Word is that real to us because it is His parenting to us — how He is incarnated and tabernacling among us as our experience of grace and as our reality (John 1:14). The Word can be so powerful because it was not only spoken and repeated, but is also the incarnated Word. That means it has a reality, a tangibility. It has physical form; it can be touched and beheld and handled (1 John 1:1). In the New Testament, Jesus came as the fulfillment of the word — as the Word — as grace and reality, in whom we have entrance and access to the realities of the blessings and inheritance of the firstborn sonship in our spirit.
Functioning by the word
And these words, which I command you today, shall be upon your heart; / And you shall repeat them to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house and when you journey on the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up… (Deut. 6:6-7)
Our relationship with the Lord is that of a parent and child, and as a parent, He desires to pass something to us. And it is this Word that we also live by and pass on as our inheritance: “And when your son asks you in time to come, saying, What is this? you shall say to him, By strength of hand Jehovah brought us out from Egypt, from the slave house” (Exo. 13:14). The inheritance of the children of Israel was the word of God. The Israelites survived from generation to generation by repeating the words to their children, not as a matter of course but as a matter of living. In Egypt, throughout the wilderness, until today — how have God’s children preserved their identity, their language, their culture? Amidst all the worldly influence, what preserves the line of God’s people? Only by the passing on of the words. The children of Israel lived and passed on this life not just by written scripture they could read, but by a precise, powerful parenting. Just like the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, there is an unmistakable presence and guiding of the parent’s hand to protect, lead, and guide (Exo. 13:22).
In Deuteronomy, we find a recounting of the events in Exodus, and again, the command to His people to repeat these words to their children. Deuteronomy itself is a book of repetition — and, actually, all throughout the Bible we find the word of God repeated from generation to generation. This repetition of the law may seem like a rebuke or a reprimand. But to repeat as a parent would to a child — as seen in chapter six — demonstrates a very different perspective, one filled with love and exhortation, experience, and profound foresight. To repeat the word is to find room in our life to hear them again and again in new contexts and new ways. Today in the church life, the Lord is speaking to us, newly every day. And when we sit in our house and when we journey on the way, when we lie down and when we rise up, His words saturate us. As a parent, He is finding and watching for any opportune time to express His heart. His Word corrects us, and aligns us — and, most important of all, it strengthens us (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It becomes a commandment that empowers us and gives us direction. All the times that these things are repeated, they are deepened and compounded. Their being spoken and spoken again is the story of God’s people that we hear and speak out and keep on our forehead, our hands, our heart.
The Lord’s parenting through His word is not just for the sake of repetition, or for the words themselves, but for our function in reality and in power; when we are parented by Him — when the words constitute us as our inheritance — there is an expression and a testimony:
And you shall bind them on your hand as a sign, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes; / And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:8-9)
In our church life today, we have parents who have passed on these words to us. Sitting in our house, journeying on the way, lying down, and rising up — we have heard the words being spoken. Received from our parents, these words become our identity — our sign and our frontlets. It is a testimony that the Lord redeemed us and brought us out so that He could usher us into the inheritance. It is a testimony of our inheritance — a lived-out expression that we are this corporate sonship. If we as believers have no daily life, there is no testimony. But if we carry the words sitting in our house and journeying on the way, lying down and rising up — no “break” from living in His word, in our spirit — then our hands bear a sign testifying that every work we do is not of our own effort, but from the mercy of the Father. And between our eyes we bear the frontlets testifying that our sight, our leading, is everything from the Father. The words are not just spoken, but realized in our works and walked out through our sight. These words are what separates God’s children, sanctifies and redeems them. It is because of these words, diligently taught, spoken about, and lived out every day, that we can become constituted as His corporate son and function accordingly.
This testimony is not individual only, but corporate — written on the doorposts of our house and on our gates. At the time of the passover, the Israelites were saved household by household; the household was the unit of salvation. Today, God is also parenting His household, which is His economy — His oikonomia. And He has a very specific way to maintain, regulate and raise up — to parent — His household: by dispensing. God’s economy is related to the dispensation of the Word as from the Father to a son, as God to His corporate firstborn. When we receive and carry these words on our heart, bound on our hands as a sign and worn as frontlets between our eyes, we also carry a household testimony. We become parents, speaking out our salvation to our children and to the world. We become doorposts and pillars — those able to hold up the Word as an identification of this household. The doorposts of a house support its entrance, and the gates open the way in. Today in the church life, the Word is the testimony written on our doorposts and gates, the entryway to the house of God. First Timothy says, “I write that you may know how one ought to conduct himself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and base of the truth” (3:15). The words of God, the living law, the law of the Spirit of life — the incarnated Word to us today — are the foundation upholding our churching and our testimony (Rom. 8:2). We don’t parent by dead letters, but by the living law — the incarnated Word (2 Cor. 3:6; John 1:14). Today, this Word is our inheritance as God’s corporate sonship. Today, He is parenting us through this Word, raising us up to produce one new man — to fulfill His economy through us unto the age to come (Eph. 2:15).
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from gatherings on 12/19/2021, 12/26/2021, and 1/23/2022, not reviewed by the speaker.)